I like coronated. It is instantly understandable, whether technically correct or not, and sounds pleasant enough.

Normalcy, however, both looks and sounds ridiculous and is far inferior to the infinitely more pleasing normality. Eradicate the written word and have the sound reserved for discussing the key near the middle of a piano, or a particularly unremarkable ocean.

Coronate actually means crown-shaped.

Normality doesn't sound too pleasing to me either if I'm fair, but normalcy is definitely ridiculous. First time I heard that.

I have to agree on normalcy - I don't think I could or have ever used the word, unlike idiocy. The worst thing about a topic like this is that you if you look at any word too long, it starts to seem odd... but words are a joy.

'Normalcy' sounds pretty normal to me and according to Merriam-Webster it's been used since 1857

According to the OED, in an un-updated entry, "coronate" is a rare synonym for "crown." However, I can see the possibility of using it to prevent ambiguity when the word "crown" could have more than one meaning, such as in "Don't Crown Hillary," which (at least in American English) could mean, "Don't hit her on the head (the crown)." There's another meaning for the verb "crowned" as well, as a certain stage in the birthing process, the details of which I won't go into here. So the headline I saw read "Don't Coronate Hillary," and I think that's a perfectly good use of this verb. As a side note, both "coronated" and "crowned" can be used in the following ways: as a past tense intransitive verb, as the past participle of a verb, and as a participial adjective. And rather than be a back-formation from "coronate," this is a real, true, oooold, Latin-based word that appears in every dictionary bigger than a thimble. ;-)

"Ask" as a noun is a big one in the business world and it drives me crazy. As in "The ask for next week is...". Why not just say " request"?

Normalcy is a perfectly cromulant word.

* sorry, cromulent - I apologate for my unaccurate speeling

guesstimate and ginormous

guesstimate is both redundant and stupid and ginormous is a recent edition to the English language (sometime in the last decade) and it is completely useless. People are dumb and those words are dumb and people who use those words are dumb.

also dumb means 'not able to speak' so i am dumb

wait

Though its one I am guilty of, the overuse of "awesome" is to many people a great example of something wrong with American English.

Does that hotdog really leave you in "awe"?

Oh, and "utilize" and "impactful" are other examples of bureaucratic speak that drive me personally nuts.

Did you just use edition in place of addition, James?

All words are mere creations, their pseudo status banished by usage and time.

Get used to it, language changes. Shakespeare tended to make stuff up when he wanted a word which didn't exist, and you should too!

I have a number of peeves. They are as follows:

-"They" as a third-person singular pronoun;
-Using "less" where "fewer" should go (e.g. "There are less people here");
-"Human" as a noun;
-"Access" as a verb;
-"[X noun] and I" when it should be "[X noun] and me";
-Comma splices;
-"Irregardless";
-Saying "backslash" when you mean forward slash;
-When people write "defiantly" when they mean "definitely" (they think the proper spelling is "definately" and get auto-corrected);
-When people override their auto-correct and write "definately";
-"PronOUnciation" rather than "pronunciation";
-Improper semicolon usage;
-"Data" or "media" as singular nouns;
-"Should of", "would of", "could of"; and
-Split infinitives (sometimes, not always).

"All words are mere creations, their pseudo status banished by usage and time.

Get used to it, language changes. Shakespeare tended to make stuff up when he wanted a word which didn't exist, and you should too!"

Kill yourself.

'Human' is a noun.

Yes, JECE. And I think that it should be an adjective only.

Poor panglos, if regardless of what you say, I am right.

The plurals media and data are singular in english and if you want to speak Latin that's a different issue.

Also, teams are often referred to as singulars rather than plurals depending on which side of the Atlantic you are on.

orathaic, anything can be correct if you take the stance that "languages change over time". Most of the things on my list are commonly accepted and generally not regarded as errors. And even if they are not seen as correct, most people would be able to determine the meaning of the sentence in which the errors were found.

You have the freedom to do whatever you like with your words. I'm not your supervisor. I just think that even when given that freedom, you should constrain yourself to a particular set of rules--namely, mine.

@ pangloss, do you also think that "gorilla", "chimpanzee" and "orangutan" should only be used as adjectives?

He can't seem to not have a problem with split infinitives.

I do not. Many items on my list hail from older style guides. Split infinitives, "they" as singular, "access" as a verb, and also "human" as a noun are all correct these days, but this has not always been the case.

I should also add that I am partial to the Oxford comma, but that seems also to be a losing battle.

Mine was a joke, mostly.

I am aware. I was responding to Jamiet99uk.

pangloss: Surely you mean 'humane', not 'human'.

I do not.

Today, we would use "human" as a noun as in "I am not an animal. I am a human." I would prefer to use human only as an adjective as in "I am not an animal. I am a human being."

I am aware that "human" as a noun is in common usage and that there isn't anything particularly wrong with it. Were I to proofread someone's work, I would leave references to "humans" untouched. But I will never write that way.

@pangloss
That's a fucking long list of annoyances. Chill out dude.

The correct pronunciation of the word human was introduced by the Ferengi by the way.

That's the shortened version. I have a few more, such as people who use apostrophes to indicate plural, interchanging "affect" and "effect", and using "to", "in", "into", and other prepositions incorrectly (example: "Your attendance to this event is requested" when it should be "Your attendance at this event is requested").